It's never to early to prepare for COVID-19

If you do something only when cases start rising, you're already too late.

Listening to the CBC Radio news on Tuesday night, I thought the announcer used some interesting wording when talking about Prince Edward Island ordering its people to mask up when they’re in indoor public spaces like stores and offices. He said that P.E.I. was bringing in this measure “even though” it hasn’t reported any new COVID-19 infections in several days.

To which I thought, yeah, that’s the whole point. COVID-19 cases are on the rise in the rest of the Canada - even inside the vaunted “Atlantic Bubble” - and as Nunavut is showing, you can go from no cases at all to one or two to an exponential growth in almost no time flat. The virus takes several days to incubate and for symptoms to appear, so waiting until infections rise to do something misses the point completely.

Some American states that resisted mask mandates are realizing this, way too late. (They’re all run by Republican Governors, of course. Democratic Governors institute tough policies to stop the spread of COVID-…